Allietare Mystery Progress: Steps 2 & 3!

I hope you had a Merry Christmas, or whatever holiday you celebrate. I had a very nice time with family. And for those who know me in real life, I had some helpful conversations with friends and family, heard two sermons custom-tailored for me, and I'm doing alright.

Yesterday I got home and enjoyed spending most of the afternoon and evening with some serious quilting therapy on Bonnie Hunter's Allietare mystery! To see my colors and step 1, look here.

Check out what others have been getting up to on Bonnie's Mystery Monday Link-up here!

Here's step 2, which I finished a little while back, but hadn't taken the time to blog about. I also went ahead and redid my step 1 hst's that didn't have enough contrast.

When I was about halfway through step 3, I was getting bored with my neutrals already (yawn!) and realized I also wanted more variety in my lime greens (gold for Bonnie). Back to the stash I went, digging deeper and expanding my horizons. I wanted more prints to spice things up. Here's what I came up with to add to the mix:

This made me much happier. And yesterday I finished up step 3:

Step 4 is almost cut out. I just have some more hot pink (Bonnie's black) to finish cutting. I'm itching to start sewing on it! Mystery quilt time is so much fun. Thanks Bonnie! 

It's been rainy and unusually warm for awhile in Georgia. The poor trees are confused and think it's spring. Can you see the pink blossoms beside the Christmas decorations? I love spring in the South. I hope we'll still have a nice one!

Thanks for stopping by and Happy New Year!

Nan

It's Mystery Time!

It's my favorite time of the quilting year! Bonnie Hunter hosts a mystery quilt every year that starts Black Friday. This year it's called Allietare, which means "to gladden", or "rejoice" in Italian and is inspired by her trip to Italy last spring.

Bonnie's colors are red, black, gold, grey and neutrals. But I used red, black and gray (among other colors) in last year's mystery so my supply of those colors is lower in my stash. Plus, I decided I wanted a quilt for my bed for spring. So I went with pastels. A palette I don't usually work with.

Here are my fabrics:

After some thought, I decided my pinks were too flat, so have since added the ones from the hearts to the left to the mix. I'm happier now. I'd forgotten about some 5" charm squares, and I like what the white/creams with pink in them do for the pile.

Here's my "during" shot:

And now I'm done!!! :)

My constant is mottled, and I didn't realize the light parts of it were so light until I started pressing my hst's open. So I pulled some of them out and set them aside. Depending on how they get used, I'm thinking I'll probably need to remake these so they'll have enough contrast. But out of 294, 14 rejects isn't so bad. And I love the variation in the fabric, so this is a small price to pay.

And now I'm ready for Step 2! Just in time for it to be released tomorrow morning. See how others are coming along by checking out Bonnie's Linkup here. Thanks, Bonnie for this fun mystery!

Thanks for stopping by,

Nan